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Being a mill-drill, the head travels on a round column, raised and lowered by a rack-and-pinion arrangement.
The round column allows the head to swing from side to side- useful for certain milling setups, but
it also means you "lose your zero" when unclamping the head and cranking it up or down.
Some mill-drill owners will thus try various tricks like pinning or screwing the 'rack' to the column, so
the head can no longer swivel. I'd thought about doing the same, but the swivel is, at times, useful
so I decided to leave it as is, for now. However, the lower mount for the rack rides on a
ball-bearing track, which allows the head to swivel smoothly. And in my case, the grease
in the old track had dried out and hardened to the consistency of glue.





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